


Waiting on a Friend

by Occula



Category: U2
Genre: Crossover, M/M, sorry about this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-29
Updated: 2017-11-29
Packaged: 2019-02-08 12:52:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12864894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Occula/pseuds/Occula
Summary: Sometimes it takes a catalyst to force a conversation that should've taken place years earlier.





	Waiting on a Friend

**Author's Note:**

> Posted on LJ Feb. 11, 2006. My first crossover? Probably my only crossover! Written for a challenge with the prompt: "Red."

Here’s how it happened. 

It was a moderate bash, just the right size, really. One of those parties where those so inclined – Edge, maybe, or Larry – look about them and wonder how they got there, how it all came to this. Fine booze flowed freely, the lines being cut and consumed in the next room were an open secret, there wasn’t a photographer or tabloid writer in sight, and at every turn one encountered still more beautiful, more famous faces.

We’d mostly just been drinking. Bono and I had done a line or two, just to get going, but we weren’t yet what I’d call messed up. We were mostly hanging out together, while Edge, in one of his chatty moods, wandered through the room having a wonderful time. Larry, well, I spent a lot of time surreptitiously eying him. There was so much felt and so little said, and so absolutely nothing acted upon. It was all struggle and denial between us. I didn’t know how he felt about it, but it frustrated the living shit out of me. Always had, but lately more than ever.

He looked particularly fine in faded jeans and crisp burgundy shirt half unbuttoned, with crazy new hipster shoes that slew me every time I looked at them. I’d been thinking about the strategically faded, worn spots of those jeans when the door flung open and the world’s biggest rock star lurched into the room.

There was a stir; heads turned. Mick Jagger, the king of our strange guild, wearing black trousers so tight I wondered whether he could sit and a scarlet silk shirt, unbuttoned further than Larry’s, that rippled with every slightest motion. He was drinking from a bottle of champagne, had a joint tucked behind his ear, and was wearing a top hat. I shit you not.

Well, there was a little rush at first as people greeted him and paid court. Even the famous are awed by certain people, and Mick, well, I don’t have to explain it to you. After awhile the volume picked back up and they gradually stopped staring, even when he swaggered over to Bono while I was getting another drink and proclaimed him a genius. “You’ll be around a _long time,_ ” he crowed, arm slung around Bono’s neck. By the time I’d made it back, he’d moved on, but Bono was still smiling.

It was some time later when I noticed that Mick was chatting Larry up.

Something went off, an alarm or radar in my head, as I watched their body language. I assumed Mick Jagger always looked like he wanted to fuck whomever he was talking to, but he was definitely leaning toward Larry suggestively. Larry took a step back, casually, but he was backed into a corner. He folded his arms, and I could see that he was being polite, but …

I kept watching, and Mick was definitely after him. The last thing anyone needed was for Larry to blow up at _him._ I grabbed a fresh bottle of beer for Larry and made my way over to them, playing it cool. He looked relieved when I held out the icy bottle.

“Thanks, Adam. Have you met …”

“Adam Clayton, heart and soul of the operation, how I love your hair,” Mick drawled, giving me a peck on either cheek, Continental style, before stroking his hand along what there was of my hair. He was halfway wrecked; there was no doubt of it. I don’t know what he was on, but his eyes were huge and had that glazed, wavering look to them. 

“My pleasure,” I said, trying not to sound completely overwhelmed to be talking to him. In person he was compelling, like Bono, with that inexplicable charisma that people in his line of work often have. The lines on his face only added character, and his mouth was the stuff of dreams. Extremely naughty dreams.

“The last album is fabulous, just fantastic, groundbreaking stuff. I was saying to your drummer …”

We both looked at where Larry had just been, then both watched his back make its way through the crowd over to Edge. Mick looked away from Larry a moment before I did. At me. And he saw. I’ve never seen such rapid perception from someone in his state.

“No luck?” he asked, and somehow it was safe for me to say, “No, I’m afraid he’s pretty straight.”

He burst out laughing, eyes glimmering, and put his hand on my shoulder. “You came over to rescue him from my clutches,” he purred.

I could only nod under his hypnotic, compelling gaze.

“Well, Adam Clayton … _you’re_ not so straight, then?”

Me? He couldn’t mean … and now I was the one backed into the corner with Mick Jagger looking into my eyes from six centimeters away.

“No,” I managed. “Not so straight at all.”

“Come back to my hotel, after,” he said, and I couldn’t say no.

“Did you want me to meet you, or –” I began; I was thinking he might not want to broadcast it to the whole room, but he cut me off.

“No, we can leave together. If you’d like, we can make him a bit jealous before we go,” he suggested.

I hesitated and looked over at Larry, who was drinking the beer I’d given him and laughing with Edge and some actress. How long had we played this game? For how long would I get nothing from him? What would it take to make him react?

“Yes,” I said, and I saw a wicked spark leap in those fathomless, dark eyes. Hastily, I amended, “A bit.”

Before I knew it, he’d gotten a fresh, cold bottle of champagne from somewhere and steered me to a chair, where he draped himself across my lap – all forty kilos of him. He had an arm round my shoulders, his fingers playing through my Mohawk like I was his new pet, and with the other he held the bottle to my lips. I curled my hand around his little hip to hold him in place and drank for him.

He let me rest between swallows – you can’t chug champagne – but he was murmuring to me the whole time about my lips and the bottle neck and my mouth, words and intentions that made me wish I had a coat to hold in front of me when I stood, unless he was going to fuck me right there in the chair, which seemed possible as he wiped a drop from my lips with his thumb and unbuttoned my shirt. He was a flirt, a tart, a totally unabashed whore.

I was aware that people were watching – that was the idea, after all – but it was the sensation of icy blue drilling into me from Larry’s direction that held my mind’s attention as Mick got me quite drunk indeed in a very short time. His hair was soft and smelled lovely, gleaming with dark and auburn highlights. He was Mick Fucking Jagger, Mick Jagger ruddy with drink, teasing me, laughing, making me drink, sliding deliberately over my cock to make me gasp, focused on me, making a fuss over me as though I were the most important thing in the world. He looked possessive and proud – not proud to have me, but proud _of_ me, somehow, I thought.

“Enough?” he asked at last, fingertips tracing my lips. “Shall we go?”

“Yes.”

He took my wrist as he stood and towed me along in his wake, drinking from the bottle, waving to Bono and the gaggle of tall, beautiful women that surrounded him, and somehow managing to steer us to pass near Larry, Larry whose eyes hadn’t left us for the three quarters of an hour in which we’d been making a spectacle.

“Lovely to have met you,” Mick cooed at Larry, and I could see Larry’s face change color before I nearly felt physical heat from the hard stare he gave me. I was too far gone to do anything but grin foolishly and, perhaps, a bit apologetically and follow.

In the lift he laughed and drank and fed me more drink, and in the back of his limo we shared the joint he’d remembered he had, not talking much, but smiling a great deal. 

What happened between us … you’d never have guessed he was fifteen years older. He was superbly fit, so small, so slim, but everything was wiry and muscular. He ran the show. Although it was I who fucked him, there was no doubt who was in charge; even the orgasms he allowed me were less for my own pleasure than for his. To see those lips, _that_ vivid, luscious mouth, wrapped around me, engulfing me, taking me, humming, praising my cock … it was unbelievable. He didn’t allow half measures, or less than full engagement. Every moment was so intense.

In between, we talked. He questioned me about what I did and what I’d done, what I preferred, and how far I’d go. He blindfolded me with a crimson scarf that went with the shirt he’d worn; he scratched me, exhausted me, instigated me. We drank, we smoked, we snorted. He asked me about music, about the Stones. Trying to explain that I loved “Sweet Virginia” because I’ve had some shit on my own shoes, or that the wibbly runs at the end of “Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown” satisfied my soul, or why the horn section on “Bitch” was fucking righteous, or how when I listened to “Sister Morphine” it was like time stopped, to _him_ , was the most surreal experience of my life. Well, apart from fucking him.

He sent me back to my hotel in his limo, warm praise and an open invitation murmured in my ear and the silk scarf stuffed into my pocket. I felt like a very expensive whore, as though he’d showered me with gifts. He’d been good to me. I was sore and exhausted; it hadn’t been rough, really, for the most part, but there had been so much of it, and it had been so intense, that my muscles were sore and tired. I was late anyway, so I picked up a desperately-needed Bloody Mary on my way into our late-morning meeting. Bono tipped me a wink, Edge nodded, but Larry … he looked at me, and then looked away, eyes so bloodshot I wondered whether he’d slept.

Things were a little different after that. Something had changed, but he still didn’t want to talk about it. He was very quiet for a couple of days, but I’d catch him looking. Not checking me out, more like examining me, as though he’d begun pondering something at the same time his gaze hit me. It took him a while. It ended up being a week or two later that he started the conversation. By the time he got round to it, I missed him badly. 

We’d been out at a few clubs, trying to keep up with Bono and, for the most part, failing. Eventually we split up, as is often the case, and Larry and I ended up sharing a ride back to the hotel. I think he orchestrated that. I opened the window a crack and lit a cigarette. He fidgeted, looking at me, looking away, not talking. It wasn’t until we finally got there that he said, “I want to talk to you. Come to my room?”

I nodded, stomach jumping. 

He waved his hand at a chair and went to the miniature refrigerator. “Beer?”

“Thanks.”

Beers were opened; he found an ashtray for the table next to my chair. He sat in the other chair at hand and leaned forward, his forearms resting on his thighs, the bottle hanging from one shapely hand. I drank, watching him, and made myself keep from lighting a cigarette yet. 

“I wanted to talk to you a couple of weeks ago,” he said. “But I was kind of pissed off, so I wanted to wait and think how to say it better.”

I drank, trying to look calm and attentive. As opposed to hysterical and attentive, which is how I felt.

“I can see how you might want to hurt me,” he went on, speaking softly. “I realize we haven’t been honest, _I_ haven’t been honest, but … I wanted to say that I’m not completely oblivious, you know. You don’t have to rub my nose in it.”

I didn’t intend to say it, but it popped out before I could think. “Could’ve fooled me.”

He frowned at his beer. “You don’t have to put on a fucking show for me. You don’t have to try to, to shame me, or whatever.” He turned the frown to me. “Were you teaching me a lesson? Sending me a message? Or just trying to get my attention?” His voice was still low. “You have my attention, all right? You have my attention, Adam.”

“Do I?” I whispered. What was I to do? Pour my heart out, finally, confess, beg him? But he wasn’t finished.

“If that’s what you want … I can’t give you that. _That_ ,” he said at my confused glance. “I can’t be some kind of, some kind of … exhibit. I can’t be some kind of cheap, frivolous game.”

“What can you be?” I asked him. Softly.

“I want to be something. I want to be something important.”

He was solemn, quiet, blushing a little. Brave, he was so brave to finally speak about this, this thing we’d both been dragging around for half our lives. “I’m sorry,” I said.

He looked at me inquiringly, eyebrow lifted.

“I _did_ rub your nose in it. It was … it was shitty. I, I get so tired of ignoring it, what we both know is looking us in the face all this time, I get so frustrated, but it wasn’t right to take it out on you like that, in front of everyone.” I was babbling, but there was so much unsaid, so much to admit. “Larry, you _are_ something important.”

“So are you,” he said softly. “You don’t have to throw yourself away to get my attention.”

I couldn’t help smiling. “Apparently I do.”

He shook his head and finished his beer with a wry smile. “Fucker.”

“Yeah, I think that’s been established.”

He took my cigarettes from the table, nicked one, and lit it. My heart was pounding. When I got a smoke for myself, I imagined he could see my hands shake. Fear, terror, ecstasy. Small flame, glowing end of the cigarette to focus on. Calm, Clayton. Calm.

“Are you sure?” I managed to ask him in the spirit of fairness. 

“Am I sure?” He looked at me sidelong, a little incredulous. “Adam, I’ve been sure since I was about twenty fucking years old. I might be too scared, proud, and stupid to have admitted it until now, but yeah, I think I’m pretty damned sure.”

After wanting to pursue this, anguishing about this, for so long, now that it came to it, I was strangely calm. “Larry, I don’t want something frivolous either. Not with you.”

“Good.” He tipped the neck of his beer bottle toward me in a kind of toast, forgetting he’d finished it. “About fucking time.”


End file.
